Episode description
While most of us don't think of hospitals as summer camps, that metaphor looms large for one former Nemours patient.
Michael Allen Alexander was born in 1947, and, as a boy, contracted polio. This was before the development of safe and effective polio vaccines, which we have today.
There is no cure for polio, but for those who have been paralyzed due to contracting the disease, there are treatments: long-term rehabilitation, physical therapy, braces, corrective shoes, and orthopedic surgery.
And that is just what Michael Alexander's family sought for their 12-year-old son from the AI Dupont institute in 1960. It's also where his life-long Nemours story begins.
Carol Vassar, producer